grape

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English grape,^[2] borrowed from Old French grape (“bunch of grapes”), also grappe and crape,^[3][4][5][6] modern grappe.^[3][7][8] The French noun was probably formed from the verb graper (“to gather grapes with a hook”),^{[3][4][5][7][9]} itself from grap (“hook”), also grape,^{[10][11][7][3]} a word of Germanic origin,^[12][13][10] probably Frankish.^[14][4][9] Barnhart puts a Gallo-Romance verb, *crappō (“to pick grapes”), between the French verb and the Frankish word.^[14] The Germanic source is Proto-Germanic *krappô (“hook”),^[4][15] the source also of Middle Dutch crappe (“hook”) and Old High German krāpfo (“hook”),^[4][13][8] and of German Krapfen (“fritter”).^[8] Köbler compares Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, wind”).^[15] Italian grappa (“hook”) and Spanish grapa (“hook”) are also from Germanic.^[3][4] The original notion was thus perhaps a vine hook used in the grape harvest.^[4][16] The English word replaced Old English wīnberige (“wine-berry”).^[16][4][17]

Earliest recorded meaning

A grape, one of the berries growing in clusters on a vine: about 1290, in the South English Legendary.^[3] Barnhart dates the word to probably before 1300, and finds it earlier in the compound win-grape, a bunch of grapes, about 1250, in the Story of Genesis and Exodus;^[14][3] Etymonline dates it to the mid-13th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In French the word meant the whole bunch, not a single berry.^[16][5][18] The OED explains the change by the word's first being adopted in plural and collective uses, from which a new singular sense grew,^[3][5] and the Shorter Oxford records the old sense "bunch of grapes" in English until the late 15th century.^[7] Ayto notes that using a word for "bunch" for the grape is common, as in French raisin, the source of raisin.^[16] The vine is not native to England.^[4] The word was extended to the berries of other plants (about 1400 to 1601, now obsolete),^[3] to the vine itself (before 1500),^[3] and to wine, the grape, in literary use from 1598 (Marston) and in the OED from 1636.^[19][3] Military use gave it the sense grapeshot, from 1687,^[3][5] and farriers used grapes for a growth on a horse's pastern from 1600.^[3][5] Grapefruit (1814) is named for its growing in clusters.^[20][11]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – win-grape, a bunch of grapes.^[14][3]
• c. 1290 – a single berry of the vine.^[3]
• c. 1400 – the berry of other plants (obsolete by 1601).^[3]
• before 1500 – the vine.^[3]
• 1600 – in plural, a growth on a horse's pastern.^[3]
• 1636 – wine.^[3]
• 1687 – grapeshot.^[3]
• 1736 – with a variety name, as muscat grape.^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A small, round, juicy berry with a green or purple skin, growing in clusters on a vine, eaten fresh, dried as raisins, or made into wine: a bowl of seedless grapes.
2. The plant that bears grapes; the grapevine.
3. the grape (informal) Wine.
4. Grapeshot.
5. grapes (plural) A diseased growth on a horse's pastern.

Word family

• grapelike
• grapery
• grapeshot
• grapestone
• grapey
• grapy
• grape sugar
• sour grapes

Related words

• grappa
• grapnel
• grapple
• cramp
• crampon
• grapefruit

Usage notes

The OED has a separate noun grape, a hook, recorded in 1493 and later in Cornwall for a grapnel, from the same French word;^[3][21] and an obsolete grape, a vulture (about 1500 to 1615), probably an altered form of gripe.^[3]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
13. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
14. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
15. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
16. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
17. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
18. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
19. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
20. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
21. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)